I Will, Will You?

FREEDOM CAMPAIGN FOR LEONARD PELTIER

Leonard Peltier was a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), which promotes Native American rights. In 1975, during a confrontation involving AIM members, two FBI agents were shot dead. Peltier was convicted of their murders, but has always denied killing the agents.

Leonard Peltier has been in jail for over 40 years now. The trial that sent him to jail for two life sentences was flawed. Amnesty International said so immediately and was joined by other human rights groups and activists. While special agents Coler and Williams died that day, Leonard Peltier did not do the killings. A major confrontation did go on for quite a while between the FBI and and the American Indian Movement. Many Indians were lost in this period.

Massive support has come from the communities of film, stage and spiritual leadership and tribal leadership across the world. Our goal is simple and it is to ask for clemency, pure and simple. We are not arguing the legal case. We are asking from President Obama for clemency for Leonard Peltier. We feel he has suffered long enough and it is the right of every American to ask for clemency by the Constitution.

Thus, we are mobilising to show the POTUS that there is a massive support for clemency for Peltier, both in the Indian communities and tribes as well as the American people.

Want to GET INVOLVED? Go here and find out how!

Aung San Suu Kyi, Jack Healey, Feryal Gharahi, October 2013

Support Aung San Suu Kyi -- Finally sitting in the Burmese parliament after decades under house arrest, the daughter of Aung San, Burma's independence hero and architect, is wildly popular and should be positioned to accede to the presidency as the overwhelming majority of her country's residents express on the street. Sadly, the hoped-for reform impulse seems to be fading among Burma's nominally civilian government and the current constitution has been set to impede her ability to even run for the office. We support the process of constitutional reform in Burma that has been called for by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy. We believe that her presidency offers the best hope for human rights inside Burma and one that will be a bulwark of hope for a region that has struggled too much with basic human rights in recent decades.

We have sights set to work with affiliated organizations and individuals to help to push capacity and awareness inside Burma and internationally for her candidacy and for human rights reforms and access at-large, including the Rohingya in western Burma and the concerns of the Kachin and other ethnic nationalities elsewhere. Human rights for all must be both talk and walk.

Human Rights for Taiwan -- A small island in the western Pacific, Taiwan occupies a hotspot of geography, climate, and culture. Increasingly, it occupies a hotspot of political concern as well. With a population of just under twenty five million, it is a small creature next to the People's Republic of China just to the west. Growing from an authoritarian single-party state that denied virtually all opposition voice to a vibrant multiparty democracy in a generation has been no small feat for this island, particularly since China hasn't renounced the possible use of force to "reunify" the island with itself. The island has stood strong. Unfortunately, Taiwan's human rights victories are under threat with the legacy party of the KMT (formerly the only party permitted) back in power and pushing Taiwan's opposition. The former (opposition) president languishes in prison; the use of the death penalty is on the uptick; Taiwan has one of the most restrictive laws in Asia for HIV-positive travel; the KMT is pushing a nuclear agenda onto a decidedly anti-nuclear constituency; and the Sunflower Movement has shown that there are grave fears of concessions to sovereignty and a transparent political process. We seek to build capacity and coalitions to expand human rights awareness in Taiwan both for the island and as a beacon to other struggling nations in Asia.

Campaign to Print The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights Into Passports -- Fewer than 5% of the world knows the Universal Declaration of Human Rights exists. Human Rights Action Center asks governments to acknowledge its existence and pronounce their commitment to uphold these basic human rightsby including the Declaration in all passports. Please WRITE A LETTER of this affect, asking your senator, representatives and the White House to include the UDHR in all US passports. If the United States Government were to do this, it would send a good signal to the rest of the world that we intend to live by international standards and would signal that the new government is quite serious about protecting the rights of all people. All it takes to get this done is a presidential order. It doesn't need any new legislation.